ABSTRACT
The electoral behavior of immigrants from the former USSR who arrived in Israel in the 1990s has impacted critically on election results in Israel. In 2006 the immigrants accounted for 16 percent of the electorate (all those with the right to vote) in Israel, and they were responsible for the election of approximately 19 of the 120 Knesset members. The importance of the “Russian” vote was previously demonstrated in the 1992 election. The voting pattern of these immigrants, indicating their slight preference for the political bloc of the left, was the deciding factor that year in the shift of power from the parties of the right to those on the left. The immigrants’ vote also had a significant effect on the composition of the Knesset and on the prime ministerial election in subsequent years. In 1996, for example, the immigrants’ voting pattern differed from that of the rest of Israel’s electorate: only 30 percent of the immigrants voted for Shimon Peres in contrast to 70 percent for Binyamin Netanyahu (Horowitz, 2003). Netanyahu defeated Peres by a small margin (only a few percentage points), with the immigrant vote determining the election results in 1996 as well.
